


wounded/surrounded

by dothemario



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, Moving Out, One Shot, Post-Break Up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-17 07:55:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28845681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dothemario/pseuds/dothemario
Summary: Ingrid keeps finding Dorothea's stuff around her apartment.
Relationships: Dorothea Arnault/Ingrid Brandl Galatea
Kudos: 14





	wounded/surrounded

It was getting ridiculous. Ingrid still finds hair on the goddamn carpet.

She stretches the strand between her fingers. It gives very little once it’s pulled taut, thick enough to withstand a lot more stress than she initially thought. She lets go, and it bounces back into a loose curl. It glowed golden with the evening sun behind the shutters, but not the same golden that it was in the morning, spilling over a silk pillow. There was a folk tale Ingrid’s father used to tell her when she was young about some guy who could spin hay into golden yarn. Bullshit, but it flitted across her mind every day that she woke up next to her.

It was just a normal piece of brown hair on an off-white shag carpet. But it was enough to make Ingrid save the living room for last on cleaning days, since it trips her into a fugue state every single time, and then the cleaning day is involuntarily over.

Ingrid thought it was getting ridiculous, but in truth it had been ridiculous from the very start. It got ridiculous twenty minutes after it happened, and Ingrid had gone to take a shower only to find Dorothea’s shampoo bottle on the edge of the bathtub.

You know that it is ridiculous when you start sitting down in the shower. 

Ingrid came to her realization three months after she was gone, the amount of time it takes to deem that it is no longer appropriate to supposedly possibly maybe call her. Sylvain said it was still fair game, but that’s him.

Looking at her contact on her phone was strangely businesslike. The call button glowed ominously in the way it did whenever Ingrid had to call the landlord because the sink broke again. 

It was, in a way, a win-win game. She might not pick up, so nothing changes. She might pick up, get mad, and hate Ingrid forever, but that still doesn’t change anything. She might pick up, and Ingrid would get a chance to glue it all back together.

But in a way, it was still losing, she decided, because everything was different now. It was not worth fixing if it could not be made new again.

How long can you pull and pull until the stress and the strain are too much to bear? When does it snap? How long have we been tearing at the seams? Why didn’t you tell me?

Ingrid was stupid and she made the mistake of flicking open the cap of the shampoo bottle during the first month. A scent can make you choke or cry or vomit in more ways than one, because a scent can make you feel.

This time, it’s the feeling of missing the bus because you didn’t run fast enough, or a dish shattering on the tile because you didn’t see it dangling. It’s the feeling of watching her typing bubble float for so long on your screen only to stop and deliver a single word. It’s the feeling of when she’s standing in the doorway with her suitcase in her hand and the gray dawn a halo behind her head and she’s asking you  _ when did you stop loving me? _

It was the feeling of drowning in the same air that they once shared. And it smelled like citrus.

Fears are always a little bit irrational. Felix was afraid of loss and Sylvain was afraid of love and Dimitri was afraid of himself and Ingrid was afraid of a bottle of DevaCurl. Three months and it still hasn’t moved from the bathtub rail.

After that, more of Dorothea’s belongings started popping up on every day that Ingrid really didn’t want them to. She found a tube of mascara underneath the bathroom cabinet on Dorothea’s birthday. When Ingrid was laid off from her job, she came home to the Dom Perignon Dorothea had brought home from Costco the day she was hired.

A cellphone charger. A deodorant stick. It’s like she did this on purpose. She probably did. Artifact after artifact, each one Ingrid insisted she paid absolutely no mind to. And then she was sitting in the middle of the floor encircled by a collection of Dorothea’s forgotten stuff like some weird fucking séance. There was even a candle. Dorothea liked Christmas candles year-round. 

Maybe she’ll summon the courage to make one fucking phone call. To admit that she’d messed up.

She didn’t, and another week passed. She writhed in bed every night and fantasized about hearing her voice. Recalling memories of it when it didn’t sound like goodbye.

Annette suggested shoving it all into a box and storing it under the bed, but that felt too sentimental. Mercedes suggested burning all of it, but that felt too mean. They settled for throwing it out.

Using an entire garbage bag for this purpose felt wasteful, and there wasn’t nearly enough stuff to fill it, but the idea of chucking everything into something meant for the trash felt liberating. It wasn’t forgetting, and it wasn’t forgiving. 

Somehow, it didn’t feel like giving up, either. It felt like peeling off a bandaid.

Ingrid learned a lot that day, ruminating as she tied the knot. Memories are meant to stay in your head. It takes two to tango. Falling behind doesn’t mean you can’t catch up. When the garbage truck came and shook out the contents of the blue can, Ingrid sat by the window and watched. 

Ingrid wasn't sure what came next, and she wasn't sure she would ever know. She just knew that life was going to keep going, and it was about time that she followed.

**Author's Note:**

> if you look not too closely, you can figure out the three songs i used to write this.
> 
> thanks for reading! i am sorry for errors in grammar and/or spelling. i wrote this on the whirlwind of a whim and now i am punting it out and into the open.


End file.
